Asia

General Douglas MacArthur’s Crisis at Biak

In April 1944, General Douglas MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific forces took a giant 600-mile leap along the north coast of New Guinea with their landing at Hollandia. Read more

Asia

Wartime Politics: Generals Hugh A. Drum and Joseph W. Stillwell

It was the worst of times for the Allies. It was the time of opportunity for senior U.S. Read more

Asia

Eleventh-Hour Peril: The U.S. Naval Escape from China

On November 11, 1941, the U.S. Navy gunboats USS Luzon and Oahu were ordered to “make quietly all preparations within the ship for a cruise at sea.” Read more

Asia

The Composite Bow: The Medieval Precursor to the Rifle

Orderly rows of Sumerian soldiers stretched across the grassy plain, their conical bronze helmets hard and bright under the sizzling sun. Read more

Asia

The M60 Machine Gun in the Vietnam War

The time was early 1967, the place a crowded square over a body of water on a narrow bridge in downtown Saigon. Read more

Asia

Tragic Surrender

On Saturday, December 6, 1941, a Royal Australian Air Force Lockheed Hudson bomber on a reconnaissance mission from Khota Bahru on the west coast of Malaya was flying northwest over the China Sea toward the Gulf of Thailand. Read more

Asia

Attack on the USS Panay

For some Americans, World War II started early. In December 1937, four years before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor propelled the United States into the war, Japanese planes attacked an American gunboat, the USS Panay, on China’s Yangtze River, strafing and bombing the boat, sinking it, killing three American crew members, and the wounding 45 others. Read more

Asia

Mission to Madagascar: British Assault on Diego Suarez Port

In early 1942 things could have hardly looked bleaker for the Allies. In Europe, Hitler’s war machine had steamrolled across the entire continent and was now battling before the gates of Moscow. Read more

Asia

Clash of the Tyrants

In the early 15th century, the strongest military powers in the world resided in Asia. Arguably, no two were more powerful than the Ottoman Empire of Bayezid I and the Tartar Empire of Tamerlane (Timur the Lame). Read more

Asia

The Army of the Ottoman Empire in 1683

The kapu kulu, made up of the regularly paid troops, provided the backbone of the Ottoman Empire army. Read more

Asia

U.S. Soldiers Missing In Action: Then and Now

To its credit, the United States has been going to extraordinary lengths to reclaim its soldiers missing in action or killed. Read more

Asia

Attila the Hun & The Battle of the Catalaunian Plains

History is as solid as bricks. Things happened and they can’t be changed.

But they can be seen with a fresh eye, or they can be noted for effects not apparent at the time. Read more